Pages

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Urban decay and regeneration is the political and social challenge right at the heart of local politics here in Stoke-on-Trent. With the major industries stripped out and a further assault on the local public sector thanks to the Tories' demented cuts, this isn't a problem that will be solved any time soon.

But spare a thought for poor Detroit. Nothing in this country comes close to the devastation deindustrialisation has wreaked on Motor City. The video below is a glimpse of a once mighty city rapidly going to seed. There is more here too.

Remarkably, China too is beginning to experience a similar problem for very different reasons. As the old industrial cities of the Rustbelt fall into rack and ruin, grossly underpopulated cities are springing up in China. Economic collapse is tearing down Detroit. An incredible property bubble is driving the construction of massive, empty metropolis. See this fascinating video:

10 comments:

Interesting post. The bit about China is particularly interesting when compared alongside the problems of urban decay in deindustrialized cities in the US and elsewhere. On Detroit, you may find a recent post of mine on the subject of interest:

Nearly all the industrial ruins from Stoke's past have either been bulldozed or, in a minority of cases, reused. The examples of Detroit and from China however dwarf any examples of disuse we have in these islands.

"The video below is a glimpse of a once mighty city rapidly going to seed."I watched an excellent video on the emergence of urban farms in Detroit, green spaces are being taken over by citizens who came there from rural areas during the boom times, perhaps Detroit didn't die when Motown relocated west and the factories closed down, just reborn.

The bit on China is particularly interesting. There's very little written in the papers about the property bubble in places like Shanghai but an implosion in the Chinese property market would have massive repurcussions for the world economy.

I've spent the last few days in Mississippi, where many blacks live in third world conditions. And unlike Detroit, this place was never effectively in the first world for many inhabitants. This, in what remains the most advanced capitalist country on the planet.

Glad to see you are back. I was surprsied to see a few weeks ago that Joan Walley was pressing in Parliament for the Tories to privilege Stoke with an Enterprise Zone.

Around the time, I wrote a series of blogs, Enterprise Zones, detailing the experience from the 1980's, and why socialists should be very hostile to them. A quote from Labour's NEC in the 1980's actually summed it up well.

“Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution was the original enterprise zone, and it was the resultant human misery which was one of the main spurs of the Trades Union movement...the Labour Movement has in turn striven for years to rid the country of the pollution of our social lives that was caused by this 'enterprise zone'. We do not look with favour on its return”.

EZ's are used as a battering ram for poor conditions, and low Council Tax. They do not create new jobs, but only shift jobs from outside to inside, which is why in the past even small businesses have opposed them. They also require large amounts of Public Spending to get them established, which means it gets drained from other uses.

The problem is you can't as a Council put restrictions on the firms going into them, which is part of their point. However, if as seems likely EZ's do get set up, socialists should have a strategy in advance, and work through local LP's and Trades Councils, and with the Co-op Bank, Party and Co-op Development Agency to try to ensure that it is worker co-operatives that are set up their rather than the local Trotters Independent Traders.

Good to see you back again. I was surprised to see a week or so again that Joan Walley asked a question at PMQ's to ask for the Tories to set up and enterprise Zone in Stoke. I'd have thought we already have enought cowboy employers, and enough of a problem with low wages without encouraging that further through Enterprise Zones.

At around that time I was in fact writing a series of bloogs on the expereicne of Enterprise Zones in the 1980's. As these posts demonstrate they did not create any substantial number of new jobs, but only moved them from outside to inside the Zones, which is why even small businesses left outside opposed them, because they were placed at a disadvantage. They required huge amounts of Public spending by Councils and otehr bodies to set them up, prepare the land, and keep them going, which meant money was draioned from other more useful purposes.

Even the LP NEC had a decent position on them at the time. They wrote,

“Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution was the original enterprise zone, and it was the resultant human misery which was one of the main spurs of the Trades Union movement...the Labour Movement has in turn striven for years to rid the country of the pollution of our social lives that was caused by this 'enterprise zone'. We do not look with favour on its return”

(NEC Home Policy Statement)

But, as i say in those posts, if we must have EZ's, we should ensure that Labour Councils work with the Co-op, Trades Councils and Trades Unions, with the Co-op Party, and the Co-op Development Agency, to encourage Worker Co-ops to set up on them, so that any subsidies go to them not to the local Trotters Independent Traders.

The Chinese empty cities are for humanoid off planet aliens. Now that the FBI has confirmed that alien bodies were recovered at Roswell, the NSA has confirmed that communications have been received, and that the FBI have confirmed that President Kennedy asked for the UFO files shortly before his asassination, official disclosure is now underway.

This is not an attempt at humour - all the above can be easily googled and confirmed.Check out www.divinecosmos.com and listen to the latest podcast and interviews.

Politically aware people need to be spiritually aware..and vice-versa!